Although there is difference depending on manufacturing methods, a process of manufacturing various chemical materials is generally accompanied by a crystallization process, a growth process, a cleaning process, a filtering process, and a drying process.
For example, a method for manufacturing a positive electrode active material for a secondary battery is largely classified into a solid-phase reaction method and a wet method. The solid-phase reaction method is a process of mixing raw powder to fire and pulverize the mixture several times.
The wet method may be classified into spray pyrolysis and co-precipitation. The spray pyrolysis is a method in which a raw material is dissolved to generate a droplet having a predetermined size and momentarily fire the droplet so as to obtain metal oxide. The co-precipitation is a method in which a raw material is dissolved to synthesize and grow a metal hydroxide precursor by adjusting a pH, and solution containing the grown precursor is filtered and dried to perform a predetermined firing process so as to obtain a positive electrode active material for a secondary battery.
A technique with respect to a co-precipitation reactor is disclosed in Korean Patent Publication No. 10-2010-0059601.
However, in such a co-precipitation reactor according to the related art, all initial products are discarded until reactants are introduced so that conditions such as a temperature, a concentration, and the like, within the reactor are the same, and thus, production yield is deteriorated.
Alternatively, a reaction time is limited by a size of the reactor, and thus, an output of the reactants is limited. As a result, improvement of uniformity of a particle size is limited due to the limitation of the reaction time.